SCORE Simple Steps to Starting Your Business 

What You will Get from this Workshop

The Simple Steps for Starting Your Business is conducted by experienced business people and designed to take you through your planning process for learning what you need to know about business through development of a marketing plan, financial plan, pulling it into a business plan then exploring financing options.

Workshop Content

• Session 1 – Start-up Basics       This introductory workshop focuses on the basics of testing your business idea and identifying the key factors that influence start-up success. Start-up Basics provides you with an overview of the skills and tools you need when deciding to start a business. In this session, you learn about: the advantages and disadvantages of owning a business, the most profitable form for your business, and the fundamentals of formation, organization, marketing, cash flow and funding sources.

• Session 2 – Marketing Plan      The third workshop provides you with an introduction to marketing communication methods and tools to maximize your customer reach. The discussion in the Marketing Plan workshop covers pricing strategies, positioning, the difference between features and benefits, and different marketing strategies. At the end of this session, you will know how to: outline your marketing strategy, test your marketing message, choose the right sales channel, and exercise your marketing strategy.

• Session 3 – Financial Projections     The fourth workshop uses exercises to help you better understand financial concepts. This session reviews sales and prices, financial risks and rewards, true start-up costs, ongoing operating expenses, setting benchmarks for tracking progress and the organization of all your financial information. Using a hands-on approach, you learn how to use our financial model to forecast sales revenues.

• Session 4 – Business Plan      The fourth workshop focuses on your  concept and bringing the business plan together with your capital needs and profit forecast. It will prepare you to discuss financing alternatives in Session 5.

• Session 5 – Funding Sources       The final workshop offers information on how to finance your small business. In this session, discussions include sources of funds, accounting the six C's of credit, banking relations, ratio analysis, and monthly preparation and review of financial statements. A bank loan officer will give an inside view of how a banker assesses the merits of business plans and loan application. At the end of the series, you have all of the tools necessary to decide whether or not to launch your small business.