The PennWest Clarion Small Business Development Center, in partnership with Ben Franklin Technology Partners, is hosting a powerful new speaker series led by entrepreneur and investor Brian Slawin. This monthly series offers real-world insights, hard-earned lessons, and actionable strategies for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and innovators. Each session—ranging from topics like challenging industry norms, raising capital, and scaling innovation to lessons learned from the startup journey—is filled with practical tools and interactive discussions.

In this Real Talk Series for Small Business on Commercializing Ideas for Growth, we will discuss NETWORKING:

A master class on creating effective connections.
“How are you?” These are the three most useless words in the world of communication. The person asking doesn’t really want to know, and the person responding doesn’t tell the truth. What follows is a lost opportunity and meaningless exchange with zero connection. So how do you move from tongue-tied to being a charismatic and interesting person? It depends on the question you start with, and then you can focus on the stream of follow-up questions. This master class isn’t a ‘sit and listen’ program. . . it’s active, involved, engaging and has participants up and out of their seats creating connections and understanding the skills needed to build their network. The master class will:

• Help participants to identify their networking style and skills
• Understand how to pre-plan the first 10 minutes of a conversation
• Understand how to ‘Break the Ice’, what an effective introduction is (and isn’t), what active listening is and how to make introductions
• Share the seven tactics to have a meaningful conversation