Small Business Essentials

This course will provide you with the principles, practices, strategies, and requirements needed to form and manage a small business. You will learn about establishing online, home-based, mobile, and commercially zoned small businesses. Topics include legal forms of organization, hiring employees, financial issues, establishing credit, securing loans, developing sales and marketing strategies, and legal issues. Additionally, you will learn how to identify and analyze the personal and business skills necessary to start a small business. Throughout this course, you will also be working in a group to analyze an existing small business startup. Not only will this give you the opportunity to network with other students interested in starting their own businesses, but it will also allow you to apply the knowledge and skills acquired to an actual small business startup. This is the first course of a two-course program. This course is all about gaining knowledge and skills (the essentials) in starting a small business. In the next course (Small Business Planning), you will be taking your business idea and planning how to launch it!

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

1. Differentiate and describe legal forms of ownership

2. Describe the business and personal skills necessary for starting a small business

3. Identify and describe legal issues and requirements of federal, state, county, and city governments

4. Identify and describe best practices for hiring and recruitment of employees

5. Describe various sales and marketing strategies

6. Explain and develop a networking strategy, outlining target customers, mentors, industry peers, advisory groups, and government

7. Describe the accounting equation and explain how financial statements are used in business accounting

8. Construct and describe an implementation and exit strategy for a small business