Business & Tech
Start Your Own Business: Chinese Seminar
The deadline to sign up for the free seminar on starting your own business, conducted in Mandarin, is April 20.
Language barriers may become less of a problem to some recent immigrants from China or Taiwan who wish to start their own businesses, with a free seminar at on April 27.
The seminar, "Should I Start a Business?" will be conducted in Mandarin through a joint effort by the cities of Milpitas and Cupertino to address the needs of their Mandarin-speaking populations.
Besides the cities themselves, both and two nonprofit organizations, NOVA and SCORE, are also sponsors of the seminar.
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The keynote speaker of the seminar is Catherine Chen, a local business owner and State Farm Insurance agent. A panel of small business owners will also share their experiences with participants.
Chen is now involved with publicizing the event. So is Erny Arifin, who attended the first Mandarin seminar on how to start a business in 2009 and runs her own graphic design business, Kree-Ayt.
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Arifin says she is happy to help promote the upcoming seminar, because she benefited from the first one.
"The seminar in 2009 was a beginning step that told me it's possible to run my own business," she said.
The lecturer of the 2009 seminar was Vicky Tsai, a local small business owner and member of the 's Asian American Business Council (AABC). Tsai is still an organizer of this year's Mandarin seminar, but she won't be available to conduct it, because she's going on a business trip to Taiwan.
The upcoming seminar conducted by Chen will basically follow Tsai's format.
According to Arifin, the seminar conducted by Tsai in 2009 gave an overview on how to write a business proposal, how to get a loan and how to approach clients. The general information she received inspired her to take specific classes to learn more about starting a business.
Arifin says those classes she took were offered by SCORE, a nonprofit association dedicated to educating entrepreneurs and helping small business start, grow and succeed nationwide. The classes were all taught in English, which was no problem to her.
However, for other Mandarin speakers who are not as fluent in English as Arifin, the SCORE classes may not work. So for those who wish to learn more about starting a business in Mandarin after the seminar on April 27, there will be classes in November, but with a fee.
To sign up for the free seminar, call Catherine Chen at 408-335-9777 by April 20.
