COURSE DESCRIPTION
Lots of young people have dreams of starting a business. Most of them don't have a clear framework to ensure that business is successful. This course is designed to walk students through all the things they will need to think about and understand to start a business.
Using the Business Model Canvas, students will take their idea through a series of exercises to ensure viability before they start a venture, receiving weekly feedback from a professional business coach along the way.
COURSE SCHEDULE & LOGISTICS
Course Duration:
- 8 weeks
Class Times:
- Fridays, Sept. 27 - Nov. 15
- 8:30 - 9:30 a.m. Pacific, 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Eastern
Office Hours:
- Fridays, Sept. 27 - Nov. 15
- 12 noon - 1 p.m. Pacific, 3-4 p.m. Eastern
Teacher-Student Interaction (Weekly):
- 60 minute live class
- One graded assignment with detailed feedback
- Office hour for additional coaching
Class Size:
- 20 student maximum, 5 minimum
Questions? Email
Course Text
Business Model Generation features a beautiful, highly visual, 4-color design that takes powerful strategic ideas and tools, and makes them easy to implement in your organization. It explains the most common Business Model patterns, based on concepts from leading business thinkers, and helps you reinterpret them for your own context. You will learn how to systematically understand, design, and implement a game-changing business model--or analyze and renovate an old one. Along the way, you'll understand at a much deeper level your customers, distribution channels, partners, revenue streams, costs, and your core value proposition.
Business Model Generation features practical innovation techniques used today by leading consultants and companies worldwide, including 3M, Ericsson, Capgemini, Deloitte, and others. Designed for doers, it is for those ready to abandon outmoded thinking and embrace new models of value creation: for executives, consultants, entrepreneurs, and leaders of all organizations. If you're ready to change the rules, you belong to "the business model generation!"
Must be purchased separately.
CURRICULUM
WEEK 1: WHY DO YOU NEED A BUSINESS MODEL?
Developing and designing a business model. Creating your first draft Business Model Canvas.
WEEK 2: WHO IS YOUR CUSTOMER?
Identifying your target market. Identify and create your first three customer profiles.
WEEK 3: WHAT MAKES YOUR BUSINESS UNIQUE?
Describing the unique features and attributes of your product, market, and business model. Writing your value proposition.
WEEK 4: HOW WILL YOU GET THE WORD OUT?
Analyzing your prospect, lead, and customer journeys. Building your sales funnels.
WEEK 5: WHO WILL YOU WORK WITH?
Identifying your key partners. Define customer relationship strategies.
WEEK 6: HOW WILL YOU EXECUTE?
Defining your key activities: what will you do every day, week, month? Create business operating systems, strategies, and routines.
WEEK 7: WHERE WILL THE MONEY COME FROM?
Identify revenue streams and hidden costs. Create your financial and profit model.
WEEK 8: HOW WILL YOU GROW?
Identifying growth strategies that will lay the groundwork for profitable growth, scale, and exit.
GRADUATION!
Start your business, become an entrepreneur, and make the world a better place!
Your Teacher
Jana Sanchez has been helping companies get results for more than 20 years. With an extensive background in organizational management, marketing, and facilitation, she helps companies get clarity to know where they need to go, and which tools will get them there. She’s an entrepreneur, educator, coach, and community leader, who is committed to building ecosystems inside and outside of organizations that support high performing teams making a significant impact within their businesses and communities.
She has more than a decade of experience in coaching executives, business owners, and graduate students with an outcome-based philosophy. Jana also teaches a broad suite of corporate training subjects and has facilitated strategic planning with Fortune 500s, small businesses, and nonprofits.
Jana has taught seminars for high school students, graduate classes for the Masters of Environment Program at CU Boulder, and has been the lead instructor for multiple business accelerators. Working with young entrepreneurs is one of her favorite opportunities, since they often teach her just as much as she teaches them.
Our Students
- 17-18 years old
- wondering if college is right for them
- have an idea for a business
- not sure a four-year business degree is worth the time/money
- big on ideas but short on business knowledge
- interested in entrepreneurship as an alternative to the corporate world
- would like to begin working on their business idea now before making any major decisions about college
- dreamers, visionaries, artists, and future tradesmen who want to chart their own course!
Our Parents
- Want to encourage their child’s passion
- Want to avoid wasting money on college
- Want their child to graduate high school with a dream and a plan
- Want a professional business coach to help their child think through the business side of things
- Want to understand viability of child’s business idea
Testimonials
Hear what real business owners have to say about Mrs. Sanchez.
My name is Kevin Benes. My business is called Running Wild. I host ultra endurance events in the mountains of Estes Park and desert of Moab. I took a small business accelerator course with Jana Sanchez in 2022-23. The most important lesson I learned from Jana was how to think through all perspectives. I’d definitely recommend her as a teacher for young people because Jana will help you think in a different way than your instincts, and that perspective will help you grow yourself and your ideas.
Jana Sanchez developed one of the most valuable courses I’ve taken within my 35 years of working professionally. By the end of the course I felt I’d completed an MBA. Jana’s dynamic presentation style of unlimited energy and enthusiasm, quick wit and endless knowledge, answering questions on the fly, kept us engaged. Jana’s showed us “tough love” while being sensitive and humorous, creating a safe environment for us to speak and share freely our wins as well as vulnerabilities with our business. Because of Jana’s unique style as an instructor, we gained not only new knowledge about maintaining and growing our businesses, but trusted friendships that have continued beyond the course.
Heidi Riedesel
Real Estate Agent in Estes Park, CO, with over $12M in volume sold
My name is Ellen Finnigan, and I am the founder of Teach to the Text. Jana Sanchez accepted me into her small business accelerator program in 2022-23 when I had nothing but the name of a company, a logo, and an idea. I had been teaching in an online school for ten years and wanted to start my own education business, but my background is in Creative Writing and Literature! I was running down a lot of wrong roads. I had hit a wall when it came to developing a website.
Jana walked us through the activities in the Business Model Canvas and provided ample resources for additional learning and enrichment. This enabled me to think through my mission, values, and purpose, which helped me to refocus my energy and develop a website that communicated my vision clearly.
Based solely on the strength of my website, Teach to the Text received a $10,000 grant from VELA Fund in spring of 2022. I can attribute this success directly to what I learned from Jana. I can't recommend her course strongly enough for entrepreneurs who are just starting out.
Finally, Jana is one of the best teachers I've ever had! She's passionate and personable, and she makes class fun. I'm so excited to have her teaching at Teach to the Text. When she opens up a section for adults, you can bet I'll be in it!