By Andrew Miller
Mark your calendars. National Small Business Week starts on Sunday.
The tradition dates back to 1963, when President Kennedy signed the proclamation to celebrate America’s entrepreneurial spirit. Since then, the Small Business Administration has set aside the first week of May to celebrate small business owners.
In particular, business owners will want to keep their schedules open on Tuesday, May 5 and Wednesday, May 6 for the free virtual summit.
Over those two days, the calendar is packed with educational presentations by industry experts, exhibit booths, free business resources, and advice from the Small Business Development Center.
Although the summit is free, registration is required. You can sign up right here.
On Tuesday, events run from 11 a.m. ET to 5:45 p.m. Sponsors include Google, Visa, and T-Mobile, among others. They’ll cover topics like accessing capital and becoming bankable, hiring secrets from Paychex, and Verizon’s advice on writing stronger proposals and winning more contracts.
At the end of Tuesday’s summit, the Small Business Development Center will share the new rules for starting a business.
Wednesday’s events will start at 11 a.m. ET and wrap up at 4:40 p.m. Presentations include tips from Visa on protecting your business from risk and fraud, AI advice from Google coaches, growth strategies from Amazon, and compensation and equity trends for 2026 from TriNet.
In addition, the Small Business Development Center will show you how to capture professional video content using what you already have.
You can see the full schedule for both days right here.
There’s no need to block off two full days in your schedule. But if capital access, fraud protection, or growth strategy are anywhere on your list right now, there are sessions here built around exactly that.
The summit is free and the schedule is already set. Hard to justify skipping it.
P.S. The presentations cover a lot of ground. If the capital access conversations spark any questions about what’s available to your business right now, we’d love to talk.