Education

Friday, September 1, 2006 at 01:46pm by Evan Prieskop in Start-Ups

It is story time. Every Friday I will tell another piece of a growing story centered on one or more fictional young entrepreneurs. Throughout the story we will watch every minute step of our protagonist’s journey, examining the necessary choices made in the founding of a small business and how those choices are made.

Elise found her mentor in Dave, a twenty-eight year old entrepreneur who runs an independent music store in the very same neighborhood Elise has selected start her clothing business.

After Dave ushers the last straggling customers out of his store at the end of the evening, he locks the doors, and he and Elise talk about starting a business. While he counts out the drawer, she sits on the counter spilling out her hopes and dreams for her swap-shop. Elise pokes through his vintage punk section while Dave mops and talks about his business’s earliest days. They end up stretched out on the floor with a notepad between them, exploring various floor layouts and gorilla marketing ideas.

Well into morning, Dave tells her he has to go home and get some sleep. “All right, kiddo,” Dave says as he the arms the alarm, “This has been a blast. Don’t forget this stuff, it’s great. All this planning and dreaming really the funnest part of starting business. Pretty soon, though, you are going to have to take Step One,” he states significantly.

“What’s Step One?” Elise asks, implying her capitalization to match his.

“Education. Lots of it. Swing by tomorrow and I will dig up all the stuff I have left over the SBA seminars and Chamber of Commerce classes I took. They are government-sponsored courses so they are little boring, and occasionally downright patronizing, but they are free. Trust me, you cannot hope to get this right from scratch without taking them.”

“But I thought you could teach me that stuff,” she pleads, just a bit petulantly…budding business owner or not, it is pretty far past her bedtime.

“Oh no. I’ll teach you the stuff they can’t, but you need to get the basics straight from the horse’s mouth.”

Elise spends the next several weeks learning about Limited Partnerships and EINs, disability insurance and sales tax filings. Droning lecturers tell her that 80% of small businesses fail in their first five years, half of those within the first year of operation. Poorly drawn cartoon characters mug about on yellowing projection screens, waxing poetic about debt liability to inexplicable calipee music.

When her last class is finished and her SBA rep has set a date for their first meeting, she goes to Dave and asks, “All right, now what?”

Dave shrugs, “I donno. Have you thought about how you are going to finance this?”

Elise frowns. “Ummmm….”

Next week: Start-Up Capital.

Catch up on the series: What Do You Know…?

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