Transcript Document
Presentation and Overview ™ SmallBizU The First Online Academy Created Especially for Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs. Our football team stinks… But our expertise rocks! Copyright © 2004 SmallBizU LLC 1. What is SmallBizU? ™ Presentation and Overview SmallBizU SmallBizU is… • SmallBizU is the first online academy created especially for small businesses and entrepreneurs. • Currently, it is the largest collection of entrepreneurial training resources available on the internet. • We have created a no-frills, utilitarian curriculum that provides small businesses with real-world tools and information. • Inside, you’ll find 20 core classes encompassing over 3,500 animated slides and 350 tools and resources contained in a comprehensive knowledgebase. ™ SmallBizU 3 What’s The Objective of SmallBizU? • SmallBizU seeks to teach entrepreneurs the 3Ms: – Money, – Marketing, and – Management. • It achieves this objective through the delivery of 20 core courses that teach the “language of business” and important trade-skills. • Beyond these core functional skills, an advanced master’s level program titled, The Entrepreneurial Master Class Curriculum (EMC2) integrates the functional core skills into a set of “entrepreneurial mindsets” designed specifically for growing companies. ™ SmallBizU 4 Design and Development… • From its inception, the curriculum of SmallBizU was developed using a branded and unified approach applied across the design of every course. • Each course moves across a continuum of ten sections. The sections move from a general description of a functional skill, to the recognized theory, to the application of the practice to a small business. • A typical course ranges anywhere from 170 to 230 slides and is presented over a three to four hour period. • Each course is delivered via the internet full of animated slides accompanied by voice-over narration, PowerPoint presentations, worksheets, toolsets, and access to a comprehensive knowledgebase. ™ SmallBizU 5 Competitive Advantage… • SmallBizU’s strategic market advantage lies with its proprietary content and business expertise in marketing to business development organizations. • The amount of intellectual property that SmallBizU has been able to amass over the five-year research and development phase makes for a formidable barrier to entry into this market for potential competitors. • From an economic perspective, it’s less expensive for an organization to license the content of SmallBizU than recreate its formidable content base. ™ SmallBizU 6 Current Courses… • Money Courses: – – – – – • Finding Money To Start A Business Creating A Loan Package Finding and Attracting Investors Creating Financial Projections Accounting 101: The Fundamentals Management Courses: – – – – – – – • Marketing Courses: –Creating Buzz: Small Business Marketing –Market Insight and Research –Positioning –Pricing Strategy and Tactics –Understanding Intellectual Property –Advertising and Promotions –Marketing 101 Crafting A Business Plan Strategic Planning and Execution The Entrepreneurial Strategies Growing A Business Choosing A Legal Structure Buying A Business Hiring and Managing Employees ™ SmallBizU 7 2. The Problem SmallBizU Solves ™ Presentation and Overview SmallBizU Product Rationale… • Most people that start a business are technicians by trade. They know a skill or craft and seek to build a business around it. • But, as Michael Gerber states in his book, The E-Myth, – “therein lies the fatal fallacy: a technician assumes because they know the trade or craft that they know how to run a business that does the technical work.” • As technicians, they have worked in their business, but not on it. ™ SmallBizU 9 Entrepreneurship is a practice… • Fortunately, the critical skills of entrepreneurship can be taught. • As management pioneer Peter Drucker stated, – “Entrepreneurship is not magic, it’s not mysterious, and it has nothing to do with genes. It’s a discipline. And, like any discipline, it can be learned and improved upon.” • SmallBizU addresses the need brought forth by both Gerber and Drucker. • It provides the necessary skills an entrepreneur needs on a “just-in-time” basis to allow them to work on their business rather than just in it. ™ SmallBizU 10 There Is A Need For SmallBizU… • There are over five million businesses in the United States with less than 20 employees—and you’d better believe that each and every one of them wants to grow. • Yet, relatively few entrepreneurs darken the doorways of our existing educational institutions to get help. Why is this? • There are two reasons why traditional community colleges and universities don’t meet the requirements of many entrepreneurs: – (1) they produce the wrong product and – (2) they deliver it through the wrong approach. ™ SmallBizU 11 The Wrong Product… • The courses delivered by conventional universities are not designed to solve the kinds of problems that entrepreneurs actually work on. • Small businesses, at least entrepreneurial ones, are formed in order to address problems that big businesses cannot solve. • If money alone could solve problems, there would be no small businesses because the big businesses with their abundant resources would run everything. • Big businesses and small businesses work on a very different set of problems using a different set of processes for dealing with these problems. You cannot just take the processes used in the management of a large enterprise and graft them onto a small business expecting to get the job done. ™ SmallBizU 12 Problems With Curriculums… • Much of the content found in the modern curriculums on entrepreneurship is self-evident: find a gap in the market, be different, the customer comes first, hire well, and so on. • Second, much of the advice is diluted from the experience of big businesses, as if small business is just a flake chipped off the larger corporate world. • This is understandable. Universities already had the curriculum developed for managing a corporation, it was quite easy to just slap the label “entrepreneurship” onto a stripped down overview of business management in order to exploit entrepreneurship’s rising popularity. ™ SmallBizU 13 The Wrong Approach… • Many universities have overshot the typical entrepreneur. • They offer more functionality than the entrepreneur needs at a price they don’t want to pay. • Many entrepreneurs are non-consumers of higher education and advanced graduate degrees because: – They might not have the requisite background to get into an MBA program, – They have a job they need to get done beyond just “to learn,” or – They might not have the time to attend an intensive program delivered in inconvenient, centralized settings. ™ SmallBizU 14 A Disruptive Business Model… • There are a few steps involved in creating a disruptive educational model for entrepreneurs. • First, disruptive companies find success in serving students who are unattractive to the mainstream universities (measured by life situation, test scores, grades, and so on). • Second, disruptive educational companies feature unique business models. They tend not to have campus infrastructures or high-priced instructors. This difference enables them to be viable at price points that leading institutions would find unachievable. • Third, they tend to provide short, special-purpose courses that need not be knitted together in degree programs, which does not fit existing universities’ education models. ™ SmallBizU 15 The SmallBizU Approach… • Interestingly, the SmallBizU approach is lower cost, more convenient, and highly customized, delighting overshot customers and expanding access to non-consumers. • SmallBizU’s strategy is to find new ways to reach entrepreneurs whom universities have historically overlooked. • These consumers are delighted with a relatively simple offering that makes it easier and more affordable to get done key jobs related to learning specific skills and solving specific problems—in other words, to grow a business. ™ SmallBizU 16 Branding... Our cheerleaders are lousy... Our football team stinks... Our frat parties are lame... But when it comes to teaching how to start and grow a business...we rock! This branding approach ties back to our rationale that universities overshoot the needs of some entrepreneurs, as well as, our relentless focus on entrepreneurship. ™ SmallBizU 17 3. How SmallBizU Works ™ Presentation and Overview SmallBizU Intro Screen ™ Presentation and Overview SmallBizU Flash Plug-in Check ™ Presentation and Overview SmallBizU SmallBizU Main Menu ™ Presentation and Overview SmallBizU Course Catalog ™ Presentation and Overview SmallBizU Course Descriptions ™ Presentation and Overview SmallBizU Course Login ™ Presentation and Overview SmallBizU 4. What SmallBizU Can Do For Your Organization ™ Presentation and Overview SmallBizU Becoming A SmallBizU Affiliate… • The vision of SmallBizU is not to be a stand-alone portal. • We understand that the most powerful way to distribute our content is through a network of affiliates—partner organizations that share our passion and conviction for helping people start and grow a business. • By becoming a SmallBizU Affiliate you will have complete access to all of our content and the ability to distribute it in a way that best fits your way of doing business. ™ SmallBizU 28 SmallBizU Affiliates… • SmallBizU was designed from the onset to be “privatelabeled” using an affiliate organization’s logo and branding assets. • The entire content of product can be attached to any website with one single internet hyperlink. • The affiliate partners themselves are the ones who ultimately develop a contractual relationship with SmallBizU—licensing its content on an annual subscription basis. • They, in turn, then market the product to their existing customer base of individual entrepreneurs. ™ SmallBizU 29 High Tech—High Touch… • SmallBizU uses some pretty fancy technology. But don’t fret. We take care of any technical support issues your clients may experience. • Although we’ve taken every measure to ensure a seamless digital experience, individual computers do vary. But that’s why we are here. • No one knows our product better than we do. We take care of the technology so you can take care of your customer. • SmallBizU handles all of the on-going back-end operations for our affiliates including: – – – – internet hosting, new product development, on-going product maintenance and updates, and all technical support. ™ SmallBizU 30 Enhance Existing Programs… • The courses and curriculum found within SmallBizU can be the perfect online compliment to your existing training programs helping you to create new forms of value for your customer. • Give your customers 24/7 access to these training materials providing for a new level of service. • Our Creative Commons Open Source License even gives you the ability to customize the curriculum to fit your particular needs. • In addition, SmallBizU can be a great distance education tool for rural or geographically dispersed regional programs. ™ SmallBizU 31 An Income Generation Tool… • Use SmallBizU to leverage corporate sponsorships or grant opportunities by selling “training seats” for local entrepreneurs. • In fact, we’ve even taken the time to write the proposal for you. Just use our proposal template, insert your name, your prospect’s company name, and the sponsorship amount you are seeking, and then print it. • Or let your customers foot the bill. Our eCommerce solutions give you the ability to resell the content in SmallBizU. Let us take care of the accounting and credit card processing—just send your customers to your website and collect a check from us. ™ SmallBizU 32 Work Smarter, Not Harder… • Screen and shape your customer interactions by allowing SmallBizU to deliver consistent and standardized training presentations. • Through this approach, you can move up the value chain when working with your customers. • You can even use the content as an internal training program for developing the skill-sets and talent of your staff. ™ SmallBizU 33 Carve Out A Niche For Yourself… • Use the content of SmallBizU to differentiate your organization from the pack. • Attract new customers and retain the ones you have through the immediate impact this program can provide. • Where else can you leverage so much value while expending so little of your staff’s time and resources? ™ SmallBizU 34 Turn-Key Marketing Materials… • As part of the product offering, a comprehensive marketing program has already been developed for affiliates including: – – – – promotional brochures, “pass-it-on-tools,” CD-ROM demonstrations, and even proposal templates for grant writing and fundraising (to help pay for the subscription fees). ™ SmallBizU 35 For More Information… • For A Full Demo: – http://www.smallbizu.org/sbudemo • To Print A Brochure: – http://www.smallbizu.org/cd/brochure.pdf • For a CD-ROM Product Overview: – http://www.smallbizu.org/cd • To Request A Proposal: – [email protected] • By Telephone: – Toll Free: 800-282-7232 ™ SmallBizU 36