Designed for people thinking about starting their own business

The City of Fort Wayne in cooperation with the Greater Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce, Women'€™s Enterprise '€“ A Program of the Fort Wayne Women'€™s Bureau, Small Business Administration, SCORE, Community Development Corp. and the Indiana Small Business Development Center will offer a free forum on how to start a business and self-employment Thursday.

The workshop, which will be 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Omni Room on the second floor of the City-County Building, will cover the following topics:

'€¢    City of Fort Wayne'€™s resources for small businesses
'€¢    Legal business structure
'€¢    Business planning
'€¢    Financial tools and cash flow
'€¢    Banking
'€¢    Funding sources and strategies

The topics are designed for people who are thinking about starting a business or have recently launched a new venture and have questions.

The workshop'€™s presenters are Denise Porter-Ross of the City of Fort Wayne; attorney Joshua Burkhardt of Beer Mallers Backs & Salin, LLP; Shirley Busack of Women'€™s Enterprise '€“ A Program of the Fort Wayne Women'€™s Bureau; Les Baggett with SCORE; Ken McCory of the Indiana Small Business Development Center; and representatives from National City Bank.

The other workshops planned for 2009 are:
'€¢    Pricing, June 18
'€¢    Taxes and record-keeping, Aug. 20
'€¢    New business start-up in a recession, Sept. 17
'€¢    Procurement, Oct. 15
'€¢    Patents, trademarks and copyright, Nov. 19

All workshops will be 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Omni Room of the City-County Building.