2 - Class Hacks

Here are some of the forms we use in our entrepreneurship classes.

Question 17: How Many Entrepreneurs Are in Your (Students') Line of Business?

Self-Employment By Occupation - 2021 CPS

This is a spreadsheet I developed from US Government statistics and occupational sites. It reports the numbers and percentages of self-employed people (the government's term for entrepreneurs) for the top 150 occupations - by numbers and percentages. For each occupation there are links to its page in the Occupational Outlook Handbook and the O*Net Database both of which give detailed rundowns of the specifics of the job, and what's needed for success.

Link to file

Question 18: How can you explore having a career as an entrepreneur?

Entrepreneurship Career Guide - Beyond the Lemonade Stand - 2021.pdf

SLU's Career Center created a workbook to help you think about careers where you are an entrepreneur, and what it might be like and how you might fit and where you might want to spend effort preparing yourself. A good companion are the occupational pages for the job you hope to have (identified in Question 17 above).

Question 19: How can you compute how much you would need to make to achieve your goals?

Skill Module 7.1 - Finding Your Magic Number

This is called your "magic number" and it is what you would hope to make from your business. This spreadsheet lets you figure out what your magic number is. It is Skill Module 7.1 from Entrepreneurial Small Business.

Link to file

Question 20: How do you find what industry your business is in (and its size)?

Skill-Module-7-2-Finding-Your-Firm

A key term to know is the formal name of the industry you (or your student) is planning to go into. This exercise (from Entrepreneurial Small Business Skill Module 7-2) helps you nail down the exact term, and armed with that helps you run down key statistics on that industry.

Link to file

Question 21: How can you find out if your product is already available?

Fellows - Is It Out There.pptx

A lot of people come up with an idea for a new product, but few do a good job of looking to see if the product is already available. Leveraging comprehensive sites like Google, Amazon and Alibaba, it is possible to quickly learn the name of the "new" product, and where it is available, and at what cost. This moves the entrepreneur from product manufacturing (which is expensive & time consuming) to retailing (which is faster and cheaper).

Question 22: What are 5 ways to assess feasibility of business ideas?

ESB6e 2021 WebEx Slides - Feasibilty.pptx

Question 23: What is the fastest way to assess the feasibility of an idea (a.k.a. the IDEO Model)?

3 characteristics (market, tecnical, business) with simplified categorical answers gives fast results. From Entrepreneurial Small Business Skill Module 4-2

Skill Module 4-2 IDEO Calcualtion.xlsx

From Entrepreneurial Small Business Skill Module 4-2