Anyone can start a small business. You don’t need a university degree or a friend who works at a bank. But you do need knowledge, a plan, and hard work to get your business off the ground. Starting a business is risky if you are not prepared. SCORE’s Small Business Essentials Workshop curriculum was developed to help anyone who is considering starting a business get the skills and knowledge to plan and successfully start a new business.
We have a 12-hour curriculum targeted at those who want to start a business. This is provided through 4 main workshops.
In our first workshop, “Creating a Quick Business Plan in 3 Hours”, we will help you take your idea and turn it into a product or service. We do that by helping you create a business plan based on the “Lean Canvas” template. In our second workshop, “Successfully Starting a Business”, we’ll help you lay the foundation for the operational and administrative aspects of your business by helping you understand the essentials of legal structure, licensing, insurance, funding, and other critical topics.
Once you have a plan for getting your business up and running you need to make a plan to get customers. In the “Successfully Marketing Your Business” workshop, we help you price and package your product or service, find your best customers (target market) and create a promotional plan that lets you present your business in the best possible light. The most critical aspect of starting your business will be to understand your projected cash flow and profit/loss. Tracking your finances is critical to any successful business; that is the goal of our next “Managing Finances for a New Business" workshop.
By taking these workshops, you will have developed the key elements of what forms a business plan. If you are considering getting a business loan or lease for your business, you will need to put all your plans together in a more formal business plan. Our “Simplified Business Plan Preparation” workshop will show you how!
After working with thousands of entrepreneurs, we at Mid-Florida SCORE have developed a precise list of decisions and plans you need to make to successfully launch a business. We have streamlined our workshops to cover these key activities so that you are prepared to accomplish them after the workshop. All the workshops are about three hours in length and taught by experienced mentors.
To find the current schedule for these workshops and to register, please go to our website at https://midflorida.score.org/content/take-workshop-6. You can request a mentor at https://midflorida.score.org/content/find-mentor-39.