Three hour classroom sessions:

You will be introduced to each subject through a discussion conducted by a business owner or executive who is a specialist in that phase of running a business. At the end of the discussion, the Discussion Leader will help you plan how to conduct that phase of your business on Planning Sheet in your workbook. You will then be expected to devote anywhere from 6 to 20 hours outside the classroom completing your Planning Sheet with written plans for conducting that phase of your business.

In the first hour and a half of the next session, your class will split up into small work groups of from 8 to 12 students and, under the direction of a skilled Workgroup Leader, you and the other students in the group will read your plans to each other for comments and criticism. At the end of the hour and a half, your Workgroup Leader will collect your Planning Sheet to add his/her written suggestions and return them to you the following week.

Meanwhile, in the second hour and a half of the session, a Discussion Leader will conduct a discussion of the subject to be dealt with in the next unit. This process will be repeated for all sixteen units in the Workbook.

At the end of the sixteen weeks, your workbook will have become an extremely detailed book of directions for successfully conducting every aspect of running your business. It will guide you in your day to day management. You’ll use the skills you’ve learned in the classroom to adjust to the dynamics of your industry, analyze new investments, develop new marketing and promotional plans, find new sales channels, determine the feasibility of adding employees, expand into new products or services, manage money more effectively and collect bills more quickly. It will also become the basis for a business plan to present to bankers and investors.