Click here to learn more about Sam Johnson, microbusiness client and owner of Gourmet to Your Door.
We provide four fundamental business assistance activities that will help you develop or expand any type of self-employment activity or microbusiness.
Are You Ready for Business? (AYRB) is a free introduction to entrepreneurship and business readiness which will help you determine whether starting a business is the right path for you and will give additional information about our Build Your Own Business training and lending services. AYRB will walk you through what makes a business successful, what leads to failure and the importance of a solid business plan. After attending this session, you will be able to register for our 10 week business planning course, Build Your Own Business. (Note: You must attend one AYRB session to register for the Build Your Own Business course.)
Build Your Own Business (BYOB) is a 10-week business plan development course that teaches core business concepts including marketing and market research, understanding financial statements, product development, record-keeping, and goal setting—all the basic skills and knowledge that you need in order to develop a simple, yet comprehensive, understandable business plan. Fees for this course are calculated on a sliding scale ranging from $50 to $200. (To register for Build Your Own Business you must attend an AYRB session.) Participants who complete this course are invited to join on-going business groups where they can access additional technical assistance, peer support and microloans to launch their businesses. BYOB is now offered in both English and Spanish.
Our Business Development Workshops are advanced, in-depth sessions that will help you handle all of the issues you will encounter as your business grows. Issues covered in these generally 2 hour sessions include: marketing/advertising, taxes, record-keeping, time management, bookkeeping, hiring, product development, customer service, business image, etc.
In addition to Business Development Workshops, we also offer individual Business Consulting that can be tailored to the specific challenges your business is facing. You can get help to set up your bookkeeping system, we can design your business card, help you set legally register your business or schedule an ongoing series of one-on-one sessions that can support the development of your business. Click here for our Business Consulting brochure.
For more information about starting your business: call: 609.341.4745 or email: ndiaz@isles.org