An 8 Week Group Consulting Program for Prospective, New, and Seasoned Entrepreneurs
Presented by the BDCC and Chris Gagné of Vermont Therapy & Consulting
Limited to 15 Applicants, Free Admission. Please complete the sign up form below.
Bring your business concept or questions through our innovative group consulting process, and emerge on the other side with a thorough business plan, more management skills, and a fuller understanding of the risks and tasks ahead. We will cover enough basics to support new and prospective businesses, and we will work with enough depth to support existing businesses considering changes or growth. Group sessions will offer a mix of instruction, group discussion, and optional homework.
If you’d like to attend only one or a few of the sessions, please still fill out the form and express your interest. This Instig8 Cohort Program is built for full-program attendees, but we will follow up with you if there is enough space to allow you to attend a session of interest. Get on the waiting list for single session sign ups, which will become available after June 4th.
Apply for the Series Here
All sessions are 90 minutes and start at 6pm sharp at the BDCC, 76 Cotton Mill Hill, Brattleboro, VT.
June 18 – The Basic Tools of Entrepreneurship: Planning, Finance, Entities and Taxes.
This session will focus on helpful skills and the steps to take ahead of starting your business, including business plans, financials, proformas, feasibility plans, zoning, permitting, and getting funded. Leasing and other foundational contracts will be discussed. Financial literacy will be a focus, including basic bookkeeping, cost of goods sold analysis, and interpreting balance sheets and profit and loss reports. We will also explore the many roles involved in managing a business, and offer a framework for balancing them.
June 25 – How to Start Your Own Business: Formation, Execution, Management, and Exit Planning.
Let’s get specific on the common steps required to start a business, get a tax number, and see if your industry sector or location has additional regulations. Maintaining focus on the core business value proposition can help inform all management decisions, so we will help refine your value statements and draw conclusions from this to help guide your management. From the registration of your business entity to the closure or sale of the business, we will discuss how your personal and professional goals might best inform your actions across the life cycle of your business.
July 2 – Location, Location, Vermont: Utilizing the Unique Benefits of Locating a Business Here.
Our region of Vermont is unique, and offers many assets for local business to draw upon. We will explore many qualitative and quantitative benefits available to businesses located in our region, including the “Vermont Quality” implied brand in consumer goods, and the many non-traditional financing options available in the region. Information on tourism, key industries, interstate traffic flows, and various tax credit programs will also be reviewed.
July 9 – Your Brand Starts With a Story: Develop Authentic and Effective Messaging and Aesthetics.
In a very interactive workshop, we will examine your core value proposition and consider how to best illuminate this using your story and your passion. We will refine your customer-facing brand using language, color, style, emotion, and identity. Incorporate your brand tone broadly across business activities to offer a durable and polished impression, using product design, pricing strategy, marketing efforts, and customer interaction standards.
July 23 – Fulfilled Expectations Create Trust: Principles of Risk Management, Quality Programs, and Service Standards.
We will explore standards and controls of Quality, by which we mean consistent and repeatable, not whether your products are good. Quality management offers a business value by defining, controlling, and reducing the number of variables involved in offering a successful product or service, which in turn allows customers to form a trusted relationship with your brand. Risk management and service standards also seek to reduce variables, increase consistency, and improve both workforce and customer experiences. Planning your approach to all these related goals will help you define and measure success as it relates to your operations, products, or services, and in turn increase your ability to control outcomes.
July 30 – Building Systems and SOPs to Support Workflow and Workforce.
Standard operating procedures help train new employees and support quality in the work culture as well. When employees feel supported with clear systems, roles, and methods of completing tasks, stress and effort are reduced, and quality improves. When work tasks are completed efficiently and using the same process each time, capacity increases and quality improves.
August 6 – Supported Self-Assessment and Participant Case Study Presentations.
After working together as a group and individually, participants will offer case study presentations based on their ideas or businesses, applying frameworks they have learned in the course. Over the course of prior sessions and self-directed preparation, participants will create fully fledged business plans for new or existing businesses, assess whether they can bring their business ideas into reality, or analyze a more specific issue within a relevant business or sector. The group will offer questions and constructive critique to each presenter.
August 13 – Once You’re In Business: Continuous Improvement, Growth, Financial Monitoring, and Damage Control.
We will discuss the balance between working in the business and on the business. Building a culture of improvement and tracking key financial ratios can keep your business headed in the right direction, improving over time. Every business manages adversity at some point, so some aspects of damage mitigation and public relations will be explored, relevant to managing either acute incidents or gradual problematic trends.