Jumpstart Your Business Series
Six workshops in six weeks offer skills and techniques essential for a successful business start-up, or to strengthen an existing business. Aspiring entrepreneurs enroll in the series to learn how to take an idea and transform it into a business. Existing businesses profit, too, by selecting individual workshops to fine-tune a business.
JumpStart Your Business offers practical information on starting and growing a business, including the nuts and bolts of developing a business idea, coursework to guide the creation of a business plan, and group interaction and networking.
1. STARTING A BUSINESS IN ILLINOIS
Here you'll learn the pros and cons of business ownership, how to identify business opportunities, and how to make the transition from employee to business owner. Also, you'll learn how to prepare yourself financially, including personal budgeting and goal setting.
2. MARKET RESEARCH
This session teaches you how to use market research to assess the potential of your business idea. It covers ways of conducting your own market research, including understanding how to find and use the most relevant market data: your target market, your optimal client profile, your competitors, and location considerations. .
3. MARKETING AND SELLING STRATEGIES
This session addresses how t distinguish between selling and marketing identify benefits for both building skills in both areas identify key forms of media that will help them market their business develop at least 3 strategies for marketing develop at least 3 strategies for selling identify elements of effective website design identify what to look for in a website designer and a website host describe the benefits and cautions of using social networking sites, a blog, search engine optimization tools describe guerilla marketing and how they might use describe webinars, podcasts, u tube, twitter pros and cons outline their plan of action to build the marketing part of their business plan.
4. FINANCIAL ANALYSIS I
You will learn how to use key financial terms and tools, how to set up your business budget, what your tax obligations are, how to project sales based on learning how to do a personal and business cash flow.statement.
5.
FINANCIAL ANALYSIS II
This session shows you how to interpret and project business financial statements. You'll learn how to determine start-up and expansion costs, develop cash flow projections, and prepare income statements.
6. BUSINESS PLAN
In the final class, you'll learn the elements, applications, and contents of a good business plan and then use these instructions to develop one specifically designed for your company.
