In addition to the English improvement classes I taught this winter, I also conducted trainings in basic business skills. The business training was much more detailed, complex and long -- a total of 24 hours, spread over two classes per week for six weeks. This was GREAT. It was, for me, not as much pure fun but a lot weightier. A lot more to dig into, grab onto. And measure!
For class one, we started with a pre-quiz. My experience in pre-service training had shown that many aspiring entrepreneurs lacked the math skills they would need for recordkeeping, so the quiz included questions like, "If one banana costs $3, how much will four bananas cost?" Everyone got that right. No one got the questions on averages and unit costs right, and the one on percentages was about 50/50. There were also more theoretical questions, like, "What bookkeeping should you do for your business?" and "What's the most important part of a business plan?" Average score was 41%.
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| I re-posted the 'Qualities of a Good Business' list for every class. Also, 'Components of a Business Plan' to remind them where we were headed. |
After quizzing, we talked about what makes a good business -- ethical and honest, good products, good customer service, and PROFITABLE. That last was my contribution. So we did an exercise to calculate profit. Not long ago I had a person come into my office having launched a small business, buying products in town and re-selling them in rural areas. They had calculated all the costs, but priced the products according to what other merchants (in town) charged, and were actually losing money with every sale. So. Clearly this is a critical concept and calculation for conversation.
Then we launched into it. I designed the course in three modules, with modules one and three following the outline of a standard business plan, and module two chockablock with recordkeeping work. Yay, math! is my business-training motto. In the first two weeks we covered product development, target markets, competitive analysis and feasibility. Then we did two weeks of bookkeeping, costing and pricing, budgeting and financing. For the final two weeks - module three - we dug into marketing, operations, a session to review things on which people had gotten stuck the first time around, and finally action plans.
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| Figuring out something or other together. July and August nights are *cold* in the drafty town hall in the southern desert town. |
It's not b-school. However, these ambitious learners were committed and engaged. Two achieved perfect attendance, and most of them were at class within 15 minutes of starting time, which is a bit of an accomplishment in a community that likes to excuse its chronic tardiness on the basis of 'Africa time.' (Actually, this community, built around a for-profit, commercial mining operation largely held by a global corporation, is pretty good about promptness.) They had homework for each class and they completed it assiduously. I included a least a bit of math on almost every assignment, focusing on the areas where people had had trouble on the pre-quiz. I had such a great time with them!
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| Presenting the results of a confab, on an apparently uproarious topic. |
I hope they did, too; although I know there was some grumbling about all the adding and subtracting. (Yay, math!) I tried to keep it interactive, and they had lots of opportunities to work together to learn or practice the material with in-class exercises. This was also useful time for networking, as people built new relationships that might come in handy some day.
In the last class, I handed out the same quiz we had on day one. The scores on that round averaged 70% (one got an 85%), for an improvement of 71%.
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