If you’ve dreamed of running your own business, you may have looked for a simple guide about the basic facts. You may have wanted a simple “How-to” book. In your search, you may have noticed that textbooks on entrepreneurship focus on theory, not practical business advice. They give you ideas and concepts, when you are looking for instructions. As most small business managers know, experience is the best teacher. Jumping right in and running your own business is the best way to learn. In this course, we will focus only on the practical aspects of “getting it done.” We will give you the website URLs for the Internal Revenue Service’s practical pages. We will direct you to the state corporation commissions‘ forms to incorporate. We will explain how to handle issuing your own direct corporate stock. We will show you how to forecast a cash budget to apply for loans.

If you are thinking of starting your own business, and need some help with practical basics, this handbook will skip the philosophy. It will go straight to the facts of what to do. Whether your business structure will be a sole proprietorship, partnership, or corporation, you will find practical business advice. The handbook is set up so that you can take each lesson in an evening after work. Come home, have dinner, sit down at the computer. Instead of checking your Facebook page, spend an hour with the evening’s lesson in business. Play around with the exercises. Try your hand at the quizzes. Meet others who share your interests. Maybe it will help you put those pieces together to strike out on your own, in your own small business. Can’t find a job? Consider entrepreneurship as an option in career planning. Why not hang out your shingle and go it alone? Isn’t small business the basic building block of the American Way? When you learn more about business, that knowledge will help you choose the next step in your career. Whatever this course does for you, you will know more when it’s over. There are no tests to submit or hurdles to jump. No one will grade your work, or criticize your performance. This class is for you to use to learn. It’s your tool, for your advancement. You decide whether it helps you, and you decide how well you are doing. No judgment will be involved.

In your universe, you are the Master. Let this set of lessons on business be just another arrow in your quiver, another tool in your toolbox, and another valuable skill in your bank of assets.

Best wishes for your future success,