Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I have a huge passion to teach IT people (like myself) business skills....basics...and more specifically integrating IT into the business.

I have about 5 courses I would try to put together and they would be 3 day courses which would be purchased individually.  Ranging from decision making to financial statement understanding.

At the end...it would be a "technical leadership" certificate.

Can a person do this and make money?  Can I even offer a certificate without being a college?  If so...I feel this could indeed be valuable.

Any advice? Any advice on how to get the word out and form my first class?

Thanks all.

One of you best options is to join the larhest Chamber of Commerce near you.  Once you're a member, you can arrange to give a presentation (basically a sales pitch) to the members of the chamber.  They are always looking for good speakers with good content.

You would just design a presentation that maybe shows the benefits of them implementing IT, and then at then end is where you will pitch your class.  You can then pass out your business cards to everyone there that has interest.  You could possibly fill up your class just from that.

It is a great place to network locally.

Yes, you can offer a certificate...it just can't be billed as a degree (which you didn't sound like you were going to do).

Another good source for clients/students would be through the trade associations that are most closely related to your target customer. You may be able to do free presentations as a speaker at their events and use that as an opportunity to pitch your technical certificate.

You will probably want to try out your classes (test drive) them first -- you could offer them for free to students at a local college or university majoring in IT and have them provide feedback (which you could then use in your marketing materials). Ditto for the local CoC members and members of your trade associations.

You should also plan to videotape your classes the third or fourth time through. That video footage can then be used to create online video ads/test-drives for your service.

One more piece of advice, go ahead and launch a website and begin your SEO efforts now, while you have your classes in development. It can take several months to hit the search engines where you want to be, so the sooner you start, the less time you have to wait once you are ready to do signups.

Best regards,

Molly Donaldson

Why limit it to 5 courses or people just in your area? This would be a great online training course reaching hundreds or thousands of people!