Kathy Bazan has joined the Yavapai College Verde Valley Small Business Development Center (SBDC) as its new business analyst.
The Sedona resident will counsel small business owners and entrepreneurs in finance management and marketing to help them grow their businesses.
She believes the new job was meant to be. “I was looking at the Yavapai College website and the job popped up.”
Bazan says she felt she was perfect for it. “They wanted someone who had been in business and knew how to talk to people in a business environment. I have the ability to invest myself in people and help them reach their dreams.”
“We understand the challenges and obstacles that await business owners,” explained Alexandria Wright, director of the Yavapai College REDC. “That’s why SBDC gives you access to a powerful network of business tools that extend throughout the federal, state, county and private sectors.”
Bazan is one of those tools. She has a long career in personnel management, career counseling, sales, social media and blogging on the subject.
A graduate of UCLA, she went to work immediately for Snelling and Snelling of Newport Beach, California, where she learned her craft.
“I love working with people,” she said.
Using the skills she learned at the personnel giant, she ran her own career counseling office for eight years. “Nurses, secretaries, engineers – I wrote them résumés and I got them jobs,” she said.
Next, she sold textbooks to colleges, where she outsold her colleagues. She said the wheels of academia grind slowly for textbook approval by a college. She approached individual professors with small classes who could make immediate decisions about a textbook for their courses.
“They [her coworkers] were waiting to land the whale and I went out and fished for minnows,” Bazan said.
Not only did the professors buy the books, but she helped them write their “publish or perish,” book proposals.
Then, in 2002, she joined the YMCA where she wrote a comprehensive protocol that consisted of information and instructions on how to render First Aid for any chemical in the facility. She also performed this very task-intensive service for another company.
Next, Bazan joined American Stirling Engines where her customers were college professors and their students. “What sophomore engineering students do is build their own engines, sit it on top of a coffee cup and the heat makes it turn.”
She said engines come in all sizes – some are small enough to sit on top of a coffee cup and tohers are large enough to run a submarine in the Swedish Navy.
In 2009, she moved to Arizona to care for an ailing relative. She stayed and went to work at CPAExell, which helps people use social media and helps them build their Facebook pages.
She also wrote a column about the proper procedure for interviewing and résumé writing.
Lately, Bazan has been operating her own social media company, working for restaurants and other businesses.
“All of my skills in marketing, sales and social media are like a beautiful tapestry with threads of different colors.”
Bazan looks forward to her new position where she will counsel and nurture small businesses.
She is a sixth generation Southern California native and the first baby born in Laguna Beach in 1954. She says there surely were other babies born before her Jan. 16 birthday, but they failed to notify the local paper that was running the contest. QCBN
For more information, call Bazan at 928-649-4580 or email her at Kathryn.Bazan@yc.edu.
By Patty McCormac
Quad Cities Business News
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