Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

What to Expect

Business Design Series is a 4-week program that virtually meets once a week for 2 hours. It is expected that the homework will take 3-5 hours each week.

At the end of this course, you will have a workable action plan for building a successful and profitable business.

This course will enable you to:

• Assess your readiness to start a business.
• Design a successful business model.
• Select a business entity and start your business.
• Identify key customers, develop a Customer Persona, and meet consumer needs.
• Create an effective elevator pitch.
• Ask the key questions every business owner must answer before starting a business.
• Determine start up costs and create a basic budget.
• Consider tax ramifications and tax advantages of owning your own business.
• Create an action plan with key milestones and next steps.

Program Overview

• Introduction to Entrepreneurship:  Is being a Business Owner for you?  We will take a deep dive into your business idea and determine its viability.  Through a series of self-assessments, you will be able to decide if entrepreneurship is right for you.  We will use a 360-degree Assessment to help you understand your strengths and weaknesses as a business owner.
• Introduction to Operations: You will develop a profile of your target customer and an elevator pitch that is designed to get their attention and help them make the decision to choose to buy from you.  You will prepare a competitive analysis and discuss time management.
• Introduction to Finance: You will learn different legal entities, how to register your business in Oregon, and review basic financial statements and other money topics such as startup costs, cash flow, and fundamental taxes.  You will receive a pre-formulated projection worksheet for developing your first two years of a profit and loss statement. You will also prepare your first internal system, a customer intake form.
• Introduction to Marketing: You will develop a list of marketing needs, learn how to overcome sales objections, discuss networking strategies, learn marketing fundamentals, and create a plan to move forward over the next 30-60-90 days.

Download the Business Design Series syllabus here.

The Investment

• Time: 4-weeks, meets once a week for 2 hours. To get the most out of our program, you will need to work 3-5 hours outside of class each week.
• Financial: $125
• The return: A plan of action and support to turn your idea into a successful business.

Hear from Our Alumni

Note

While the Business Design Series (BDS) is a valuable stand-alone class, it yields the best results when followed by the Business Builders training program. BDS helps you assess the viability of your business idea and determine whether entrepreneurship is the right path for you. Business Builders is for those who complete BDS and decide that their business idea is worth pursuing, providing additional tools and resources needed to establish a strong foundation and successfully launch their business.