Polished Properties owner Peggy Collins says her new Atlantic Beach business, which specializes in providing cleaning and maintenance services for builders’ model homes, is motivated by her fanaticism with spotlessness.
And entrepreneurship.
That’s why Collins continually seeks out learning opportunities, including through the Northeast Florida Builders Association’s free lunch-and-learn seminars for members.
NEFBA serves the construction trade and associated industries in Baker, Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties.
“When you step into your own business, you need to wear many hats and take in all the information you can,” Collins said after attending a lunch-and-learn event about online marketing hosted by Web.com.
The twice-monthly seminars are conducted by NEFBA associate members, such as Web.com, whose primary business is not directly tied to the building and construction trade.
“I learned quite a bit at the Web.com seminar,” Collins said. “We learned how to register domain names and protect them. This can be valuable to protect against opportunists buying your name and selling it back to you at an inflated price. It pays to stay on top of the payments for the domain name.”
The seminars draw as many as 30 people and help fulfill NEFBA’s mission of providing educational opportunities for members, said Corey Deal, the association’s executive officer.
The organization’s other primary undertakings are advocacy, networking and community service.
“When the industry and the association were in survival mode, we had stopped doing as much education. Now that the association is healthy again and growing again, we’re dipping our toes back into programs like lunch-and-learns, and we’re getting a good response from our members about them,” Deal said.
While the upcoming NEFBA lunch-and-learns will address topics such as mortgage banking and LED lighting, Web.com sessions also are prevalent on the upcoming calendar.
Web.com is a Jacksonville-based company with more 3 million web services customers worldwide. Its seminar was titled “Online essentials and domains 101.”
At the seminar, Web.com Jacksonville branch manager Dan Broze emphasized the importance of companies selecting multiple domain names for their websites along with having employees or web marketing firms dedicated to managing web presence.
“There are more than 250 million websites and you are just one little star in the sky,” he said.
Broze said Web.com’s seminars offered through NEFBA and other organizations aim to provide small- and medium-sized businesses with the foundational knowledge to be successful online.
Web.com doesn’t directly pitch its online marketing services in its NEFBA seminars, he said, but discusses the industry in general.
“I think the Web.com lunch-and-learn events have proven very useful to the builder community in offering an excellent forum for free education in the world of increasingly complex technology, ” says David Parker, whose REDdot Marketing is an NEFBA associate member.
Parker says staying on top of industry and technology trends is critical because of how fast the business world is moving.
“I learn something new every time I attend a Web.com lunch-and-learn, and even if it is just one takeaway, it is well worth my time,” he said.
Susan Bivins, chief operating officer for D.S. Ware Homes in Jacksonville, says the November seminar provided some essential online marketing advice for her team.
“We are constantly in the process of reviewing and revamping our website,” she said. “(The seminar) was very helpful in giving me a basic understanding of the nuts and bolts.”
“I found the seminar compelling,” added Cecil W. Powell & Co. account executive John Cotton. “Dan and his team from Web.com truly understand the recipe for online success.”
Collins says other enticing aspects of the seminars are they provide networking opportunities and that they are free.
“As a small business, you always have to be very conscious of your expenses, which makes the lunch-and-learns especially valuable,” she said.
Broze said upcoming Web.com online marketing seminars will address such topics as website essentials, digital marketing concepts and social media advertising.
The host companies provide the lunch, he said.