HBS offers free consulting for NY businesses

The Harvard Business School (HBS) Club of New York has announced a new initiative that will provide support to New York local area small businesses to help them rebuild and grow, during these tough times.

The Recover & Rebuild Initiative was developed by a group of over 50 HBS alumni volunteers. The team of volunteers consists of small business owners who each come with varied business management experience.

Since its inception, the initiative has expanded its outreach to include businesses from anywhere in the New York Metro Area, and to date, the HBS alumni have provided coaching to over 150 business clients and this total is rapidly growing on a pro-bono basis.

Through this initiative, HBS alumni volunteers provide individual coaching sessions that focus on some of the most pressing challenges or opportunities faced by small businesses in the area.

This initiative was spearheaded by Recover & Rebuild Initiative founder, Bruce R. Bockmann from MBA class of ’67.

Bockmann is a Chairman of the HBS Club of New York and a leader of the Skills Gap, Entrepreneurship, and Succession Planning Initiatives.

The leadership team at HBS also consists of Tamara Bowens, who is currently the Head of Small-Medium Business (SMB) Sales & Retention at Spectrum where she is responsible for developing and implementing strategies designed to meet and exceed revenue and retention goals for the SMB client segment.

Richard Kane from the MBA graduating class of ’68 is also on the leadership team of this initiative. Kane’s career in financial services included senior positions at Citicorp, Bank Leumi, and Marsh & McLennon. He is currently involved in investing and providing advice to early-stage companies.

Meg Langan and William J. Meurer both from MBA ’92 and ’90 respectively also form the leadership team. Langan is a consultant working with small and medium-sized businesses on strategic, financial, and people issues while Meurer’s experience includes strategy consulting at Boston Consulting Group, venture capital investing and scaling up early-stage application software businesses.

These coaching sessions are conducted virtually and include one or more Harvard Business School alumni volunteers with both broad-based general management and specific functional expertise relevant to the small business being coached.

Small business owners can also participate in live group coaching sessions carried out virtually with up to 10 neighbouring businesses per session.

These sessions are moderated by Harvard Business School alumni and are an avenue for small business entrepreneurs to ask questions and gain insight from both the moderator and coach as well as the other businesses participating in the session.

These group coaching sessions are open-ended in nature, allowing small business owners to discuss a variety of business-related topics and are highly interactive.

Participants of the Recover & Rebuild Initiative will also have access to webinars which will be available on the Harvard Business School Club of New York’s Recover & Rebuild website.

The webinars are developed by HBS alumni teams and cover topics on digital marketing, sales, scenario planning, and best practices for table service restaurants pivoting to delivery.

HBS alumni’s webinar on digital marketing strategy and tactics include frameworks and perspectives on how to devise a focused digital marketing strategy and tips or approaches to execute a digital marketing plan.

The Marketing and Sales webinar aims to help small business leaders identify and understand the needs of their customer base and outreach efforts, including how to manage any “real-time” pivots to a new business model during these challenging times.

The Scenario Planning webinar provides details on how to think through, lay out, and evaluate various potential business outcomes posed by COVID-19, including financial analysis that helps a small business proactively plan for future cash needs and financial options under various potential business scenarios.